McGrath, Laura, ed. Collaborative Approaches to the Digital in English Studies. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2011. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/ebooks-and-projects/cad

Part 1

Beginning Part 1, Joyce Neff, Liza Potts, and Carl Whithaus provide readers with an extensive view of what counts as collaborative research and scholarship employing digital technologies. Their essay, “Collaborative methodologies for new media research: Using grounded theory and contextual inquiry,” as their title suggests, focuses on new media research projects employing grounded theory and contextual inquiry. In fact, the authors clearly and thoroughly demonstrate how grounded theory and contextual inquiry, as approached from collaborative partnerships, “provide researcher with robust means of investigating new types of texts and the composing processes that produce them” (33). What is truly remarkable about this essay is the extent to which the authors went to provide a valid and replicable approach to progressive research in the digital humanities; this essay can be seen as a step-by-step guide for the design and implementation of collaborative, new media research projects. The inclusion of videos, charts, key findings, and links further promote the feasibility for interested researchers to engage similar pursuits.

With the task of further clarifying current notions of digital humanities research, Lisa Spiro’s “Computing and communicating knowledge: Collaborative approaches to digital humanities projects,” provides a survey of digital humanities research, exemplifying the importance of collaboration. Spiro provides and analyzes the results from case studies she conducted with project leaders of digital humanities research goals and practices. As her results show, many (if not all) of these research projects and goals demand collaboration. Spiro’s essay offers much for English Studies to consider; one of her most compelling conclusions is that “the digital humanities will simply be the humanities,” the implications are noted in that “many digital humanities projects demonstrate how the humanities can be more interactive, interdisciplinary, and engaged, enabling scholars and the public alike to create and share knowledge” (70). Spiro’s overview serves as a catalyst for the importance of this collection and serves as a nice setup for the chapters to follow.

Whereas Spiro showcased some of the ways researchers are approaching collaborative digital research, Laura McGrath’s essay, "Technology-focused collaborative research initiatives in English Studies: The possibilities of team-based approaches," explores three established digital research initiatives that facilitate collaborative scholarship, research, and professionalization for professors and their students. The three research initiatives McGrath focuses on are the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center of Michigan State University, the Digital Writing Research Lab (DWRL) at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, English Department. McGrath’s research process began by examining each research initiative’s websites before visiting and interviewing participants at each location (her slideshow of images from each of the sites is included as an appendix).

In summarizing her findings, McGrath reveals the principles the three sites have in common; McGrath then demonstrates how collaborative research with digital technology “promote[s] and accelerate[s] inquiry and that are able to produce outcomes that are richer for the variety of perspectives that shape them" (107). McGrath’s conclusion that collaborative approaches to teaching and research provide rich, unexpected possibilities is a sentiment shared by many in the collection. In fact, the following two essays provide substantial support for this claim in sharing personal insights about two of the three research initiatives introduced in McGrath’s essay.

Chapters 4 and 5 are two of the four essays in the collection that feature the scholarship of graduate students (chapters 3, 4, 5, and 9); chapters 4 and 5 further McGrath’s investigation of research initiatives by providing first-hand accounts of experiences working on the WIDE (chapter 4) and DWRL (chapter 5) research initiatives. Then-graduate students Jim Rodolfo, Martine Courant Rife, Kendall Leon, Amy Diehl, Doug Walls, and Stacey Pigg, are joined by WIDE co-director Jeff Grabill, to recount their experiences on “Collaboration and graduate student professionalization in a digital humanities research center.” However, this essay does more than feature the narrative recounting of co-authors’ experiences working in the WIDE Research Center; the essay also presents a compelling argument for establishing research centers in one’s own department and / or university. The authors' individual narratives and experiences are nicely wedded in the conclusion with the presentation of four commonalities they argue, "could serve as starting points for future conversations about digital humanities research and graduate student professionalization" (134). The four “starting points” the authors individually and collectively exemplify through their narratives, are “infrastructure, space, relationships, and research.” Lastly, this chapter features a video interview of Jeff Grabill by Jim Rodolfo, providing the compliment of a faculty (and co-founder’s) perspective of the research center.

Immediately following is an extended view of the DWRL by graduate students Sean McCarthy and Lauren Mitchell Nahas. Their telling title, "Playful affinity: A case study of the digital writing and research lab as a collaborative graduate student research network," offers "snapshots" of the mission and research upheld by the lab (154). By focusing on play, Nahas and McCarthy demonstrate the extent to which play fosters productive and contributive potential for graduate students’ teaching and research. The authors reveal that James Paul Gee's theory of "affinity spaces" is "most applicable to a research collective such as the DWRL” (148). According to the authors, “Gee characterizes affinity spaces as places of learning where people interested in or 'passionate' about learning particular topics congregate" (148). A series of four videos compliment the description of the lab. The videos showcase students working in the lab and seek to demonstrate how Gee's theory of affinity spaces holds true (is evident) from interviews with actual students who use the lab. Part 2